Somewhere... probably now happily retired, is the marketer who came up with the idea of Black Friday.

But what started out as a simple marketing idea has grown - as these things will, into an uncontrollable monster of a day for marketers.

Here's what you've got... one day. One day during which you slash your margins and hike up your ad spend to try and to beat your competitors to be the trader making the least money on every sale. He who makes the least wins. And the more of the less you make the better... somehow.

Over the past month or so, two friends of mine have contacted me about emails they have received.

Take note: these are smart people. They are well educated and, well, let's just say they are as long on the tooth as I. And yet both were asking me to verify the emails they had received about having won some kind of cash prize in an online lottery (click on the image to see the entire letter).

In case you missed it, Burger King sent an open invitation to McDonalds to join forces on World Peace Day to put aside their differences and sell a combined burger - the McWhopper in a pop up restaurant that would combine elements of the two brands.

They even built a website to present the invitation. It's impressive...

There has been little flurry of activity online recently of people complaining the Google AdWords doesn't work, that it's a scam, and that Google have got us all hoodwinked into thinking that if you're in business you must be running an online advertising campaign.

The evidence for this seems to boil down to the same fundamental argument in most cases - "I've had so many dozens/hundreds/thousands of clicks to my website and not a single sale/form completion/phone call."

The conclusion? It's Google.

There is a saying... which I imagine is based on truth, although I have no personal experience... You can lead a horse to water, but you can 't make it drink.

The same is true of website visitors.

You can bring them to your website in droves, but you cannot make them buy from you. Or let me rephrase that. You can bring them to your website and then your website has to take over and convert them into paying customers. Bringing them to the page is not enough.